Extract from Nazi Women
Hitler’s Seduction of a Nation
Chapter 6 - The Ideal Nazi Woman
On 30 January 1933, the Nazis came to power. They celebrated with a huge parade: column after column of uniformed men – swastika banners waving, torches burning and music playing – marched through the Brandenberg Gate and took over the streets of Berlin. In this massive show of political strength, there was not a single woman.
From the foundation of the Nazi party in 1921, women were denied any position of power in its hierarchy – the only reference to women in its programme was Point 21, which pledged protection for mothers. Since winning the vote in 1918, women had been elected in significant numbers to represent all the other main parties in local and regional government, and in the German Reichstag, where they made up 10 per cent of deputies. In the National Socialist Party there were no women at all.
Hitler’s view on their political participation derived from his view of women: ‘The woman loves more deeply than the man. But in her, intellect plays no role… In political questions, the woman, even if she is extremely intelligent, cannot separate reason from feeling.’ But he knew, cynically, that they had to be wooed: ‘I am no friend of female suffrage. If however we must continue with this tomfoolery, then we should draw what advantage we can…Women will always vote for law and order and a uniform, you can be sure of that.’
The Nazis offered women a special role – as companions to warrior husbands in forging the Thousand Year Reich. Their mission was to be wives supporting their husbands, and mothers breeding the future master race. In this, their ‘true’ role, they would be valued in the New Germany. ‘In my state,’ Hitler declared, ‘the mother is the most important citizen.’ The new state, added Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, would re-establish the ‘proper and natural sexual division of labour’ which assigned ‘clearly distinct domains to men and women, putting an end once and for all to any public disregard of the feminine mission’. Men and women would be equally respected, but in their separate domains. In marriage, family and motherhood German women would find their true vocation in the service of the whole nation, the Volksgemeinschaft.
Others felt less need to be either subtle or seductive. Women served the will of the nation – and that will was male, declared one male follower of Hitler in a Nazi women’s magazine: ‘The National Socialist movement is an emphatically male phenomenon as far as political power is concerned. Women in parliament are a depressing sign of liberalism. They insult male values by imitating men. We believe that every genuine woman will, in her deepest feelings, pay homage to the masculine principle of National Socialism. Only then will she become a total woman!’
When Hitler came to power, almost half of those voting for him were women. His promise to restore order and end unemployment held strong appeal. German women had experienced the anarchy of street fighting between rival political gangs on their doorsteps. Unemployment bred uncertainty and discord at the heart of their family lives. Women who worked to keep their families as their husbands lost their jobs, or who saw their standard of life deteriorate, longed for stability and certainty – feelings successfully tapped by Hitler.
He promised to reassert German pride and greatness, and restore German honour after what he saw as the ignominy and injustices of the Versailles Treaty. He would build a ‘national community’ – the Volk – a New Germany in which individuals sacrificed themselves for the whole nation. Jutta Rüdiger, an early convert and later the Head of the League of German Girls, heard him speak in Düsseldorf in 1932: ‘It was a huge hall and everyone was waiting for Hitler to arrive… I must say it was an electrifying atmosphere… Even before 1933 everybody was waiting for him as if he was a saviour. Then he went to the podium. I remember it all went quiet, and he started to speak in his serious voice. Calm, slow, and then he got more and more enthusiastic. I must admit, I can’t remember exactly what he actually said. But my impression afterwards was: this is a man who does not want anything for himself, but only thinks about how he can help the German people.’
Traudl Junge, later Hitler’s personal secretary, remembers him coming to power when she was a schoolgirl: ‘In school and generally it was celebrated as a liberation, that Germany could have hope again. I felt great joy then. It was portrayed at school as a turning point in the fate of the Fatherland…There was a chance that German self-confidence could grow again. The words “Fatherland” and “German people” [Volk] were big, meaningful words which you used carefully – something big and grand. Before, the national spirit was depressed, and it was renewed, rejuvenated, and people responded very positively.’
Hitler was greeted as a saviour who would deliver Germany from economic turmoil, social disarray and humiliation. The leader cult, his demagogic style and the spectacle of Nazi gatherings were designed to excite religious fervour and unqualified devotion. Women were particular targets. American journalist Louis Lochner observed his charisma at work: ‘I have heard the Führer address a group of German women, speaking so tenderly of his mother, expressing such fond concern for the problems of the housewife, tracing so eloquently what the German women had done and could do for the Nazi cause, that the listeners were in tears.’
Chapter 8 - The Grand Seduction of Youth
For Nazis, the key to the future of the Thousand Year Reich was the allegiance of youth... The leadership immediately set about organizing youth into a coherent body of loyal supporters. Under Baldur von Schirach, himself only twenty-five at the time, the organization was to net all young people from ages ten to eighteen to be schooled in Nazi ideology and trained to be the future valuable members of the Reich.
The BDM [Bund Deutsche Mädchen, League of German Girls] leaders were clear about their goal – to mould a New Woman. Their leader Jutta Rüdiger decreed: ‘We wanted the “New German Woman” to be the bearer of German culture and moral standards for the whole People. Our aim was that they should achieve health, self-discipline, courage, and later on with the gymnastics, gracefulness – in the sense of beautiful harmonious movement which also reflects a healthy mind and body.’ Girls would carry Nazi values into the next generation.
It was German girls’ duty to be healthy, for their bodies belonged to the nation. They must be fit in every way for their ultimate destiny: childbearing. Sport, along with physical training and exercise, was essential. Massive displays of formation dancing and group gymnastics were a regular feature of BDM life. Sport and domestic skills took precedence over intellectual pursuits, which the male leaders considered were against their ‘nature’. All girls were trained in household subjects – the theory of nutrition and baby care and the practice of sewing, handicrafts, cooking, healthy eating, and the importance of fresh air and exercise and cleanliness.
The main aim of the BDM was to produce a new generation of ‘little Nazis’, who were utterly loyal to the state regardless of their parents’ views. They were to enrol in building a new Germany, a nation distinct from the past, and from their parents. ‘All the time you were kept busy and interested, and you really believed you had to change the world,’ Hedwig Ertl remembers. ‘As a young person, you were taken seriously. You did things which were important… Your dependence on your parents was reduced, because all the time it was your work for the Hitler Youth that came first, and your parents came second.’
For many girls, joining the BDM was an act of rebellion against their parents. Susanne von der Borch was ‘the ideal German girl’ – tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed and mad about sport: ‘From the first day on, this was my world. It fitted my personality, because I had always been very sporty and I liked being with my friends. And I always wanted to get out of the house. So this was the best excuse for me, I couldn’t be at home, because there was always something happening: I had to go riding, or skating, or summer camp. I was never at home.’ Renate Finckh found consolation in the BDM when her parents became active Nazis: ‘At home no one really had time for me.’ She joined, aged ten, and ‘finally found an emotional home, a safe refuge, and shortly thereafter a space in which I was valued’. The summons to girls – ‘The Führer needs you!’ – moved her: ‘I was filled with pride and joy that someone needed me for a higher purpose.’ Membership gave her life meaning.
Chapter 9 - Road to War
By 1936, Hitler’s popularity was at its height. The economy was showing signs of improvement after rearmament accelerated from 1935.
Home as the place of sanctuary and refuge was steadily invaded. As the State demanded the participation of its members in service to the Volk, the authority of the family was eroded. Children were required to participate in Hitler Youth activities that patently challenged the parents’ authority, and deliberately claimed their loyalty to the State and the Führer above their loyalty to their families. Conscription would take young men away from home into the maw of the military machine. Girls’ work duty year separated them from their parents from the age they left school. Nazi Party organizations had the right to intrude into family life and coerce its members to participate in any number of activities in the name of duty to the State.
The net of control tightened at every level of society. Local festivals as well as national days of celebration were taken over as Nazi events. May Day, 1 May, became the Nazis’ most important official holiday, celebrating the social achievements of the Nazis and the new ’solidarity’ between workers and leaders. The rituals of local harvest festivals were transformed by Nazi paraphernalia; small children marched in line with swastika symbols garlanded with ribbons and flowers while the local Party members, the Hitler Youth and the BDM marched in uniform to the beat of drums. Nazi parades were a regular occurrence in every small town, augmenting the frequent shows of uniformed strength on the streets of main cities, and the ultimate display of ritual and regimentation at the annual Nuremberg Party rallies.
At most of these events women, except the BDM girls, were bystanders. BDM girls were required to turn up en masse and engage in exultant cheering and saluting.
Home movies show how Nazism penetrated to the heart of family life. Loyal fathers taught their children to greet them with ‘Heil Hitler’ each morning at the breakfast table. Boys as young as four dressed up in SS uniform and paraded in the back garden, waving swastikas. Playing shops, a child as young as two was caught on film greeting his brother with a Hitler salute. Portraits of Hitler adorned the living rooms of homes throughout Germany. (‘The masses need an idol,’ Hitler declared.) Children’s dolls’ houses were supplied with his portrait already in place in their miniature living rooms. Postcard portraits of Hitler, like pin-ups, were on sale at street corners. Shopkeepers designed window displays with Hitler’s portrait as their centrepiece, and hung the swastika over their doors.
Chapter 10 - Conquest (War)
The relatively few women working at the front lines experienced the savagery of war at first hand. This included 160,000 nurses, and typists and secretaries employed by the Wehrmacht administration. Ilse Schmidt was a typist with the Army Propaganda Department, posted first to Paris, then the Ukraine and Belgrade. In the Ukraine, she was assigned a maid called Klepka, who cleaned for her and her room-mate. ‘She was Jewish. She was a very shy, very nice girl. My room-mate and I would always give something extra to her because Klepka was very skinny, and we felt that she probably didn’t get enough to eat. We gave her bread, and some clothes.’ One night Ilse was woken up by loud noises outside her room: ‘I thought, what is this racket? People were throwing tin cans in the street, and from their clothes I could see that they were Jews. They were rounded up at night. I didn’t know what was happening to them but I had a suspicion. These people wanted to attract attention to themselves: “Look what is happening to us! Don’t let it happen to us.” And I thought, “Defend yourselves, don’t let them do this to you.”… I found out later that there were many more guards than I saw that night. And later on I found out that in Rowno all Jews had been executed that night near the train station. I never saw Klepka again. This experience shattered me personally.’
When she talked with her women colleagues afterwards, they responded with shock, tinged with pragmatism: ‘Some of my room-mates said later, “Why did they do this? We need the Jews as labourers.” Klepka’s father was a tailor, he had worked for the German Army. We needed these labourers… These people had been helping us, our soldiers had been sent to the front to die, so we needed them to do all the other work… Why did it happen? Everyone was really disgusted about it.’ Isle Schmidt’s experiences at the front separated her from other women – but, trained in obedience, she kept silent: ‘When I came home, I didn’t dare to talk about the killing of the Jews, I didn’t dare. I was afraid. At the back of my mind, the obligation that I had to be quiet about what I saw – it was like the oath of the soldiers.’
Ilse Schmidt was posted to Belgrade, where the ‘pacification’ programme involved the execution of partisans. She was working in the propaganda department: ‘I had to open the post and I had no idea, I just opened this envelope, and then I saw to my horror how war reporters had photographed the executions of partisans. I didn’t want to look at it, my first impulse was to get up and run away… And after that, whenever I thought there were photos in the envelopes, I just put them on the adjutant’s desk unopened. He looked at me as if he wanted to say something, and then opened them himself.’ Looking back, she was filled with shock and terror at the pictures – ‘How on earth can you take pictures of an execution?’ She wondered whether men felt differently from women: ‘I think men think, it’s either him or me. Before you shoot, I will shoot. Men do think differently.’ But not all men: ‘I was friendly with an army lawyer who had to attend executions and court-martials as a witness. He would always come back like an old man. His hair would be hanging down into his face, and he would always be smelling of sweat, he was so disgusted about it as well. He would say to me, “I’m the son of a priest and I was brought up in the belief that you should not kill.” He was always sick afterwards, when he had to watch this. Especially later on, I had to distance myself from him because his depression made me even more depressed.’
Chapter 11 - Plunder
As the war dragged on, more and more women were recruited for secretarial and communications work in the services, mainly on their Labour Year, which in 1944 was extended to eighteen months and then made indefinite. Those with nursing qualifications were directed to the Red Cross at home and work in field hospitals in the occupied territories. Women were also enlisted for searchlight duties and worked on anti-aircraft guns by the end of the war. Erna Tietz, aged twenty-two, was in early 1945 responsible for teams of young women anti-aircraft gunners (Flakwaffenhilferin) handling the powerful ‘eighty-eight’ gun. Her identification papers stated that she was on ‘special assignment’ because ‘one wanted to avoid that the public learn that women were assigned to weapons. That one wanted to veil.’ Women soldiers did not fit the Nazi view of women.
Younger BDM girls had their work cut out, helping in the harvest, handing out food ration cards, collecting money for the Winter Relief Fund, helping soldiers with washing and mending clothes, looking after the wounded and tending soldiers’ graves. They were also enlisted in a scheme to keep up the troops’ morale by corresponding with soldiers at the front. Hedwig Ertl wrote to many soldiers: ‘It was a very emotional thing. It didn’t matter whether it was someone close to you. We were writing a lot of letters to unknown soldiers, soldiers who otherwise wouldn’t receive letters from anyone else, soldiers who didn’t have any relatives. And they would reply, and sometimes very beautiful relationships grew out of that. And most of them ended on the battlefield, but that was the way it was. The letters were very important.’
From the beginning of the war, the position of the Jews remaining in Germany deteriorated rapidly. In September 1941, the pauperization of the Jewish population through expropriations and evictions, and the accumulating humiliations in daily life through the removal of all liberties, civil and otherwise, was compounded by the introduction of the compulsory Yellow Star of David to be worn by all Jews.
Before then, life for Jews had reached the edge of the endurable. Banned from restaurants, cinemas and other public places, deprived of driving licences, forbidden to use public telephones, most were confined to home. Here they faced regular, often daily Gestapo raids to check whether they had banned radio sets or forbidden foods, woollen clothing or furs or household pets – all banned to Jews since early 1942. They were denied clothing rations. Their food rations were reduced to half that of the rest of the population and, from 4 July 1940, they were allowed to purchase food only between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon.
Lilli Gentzen, as a thirteen-year-old working in her father’s butcher’s shop, witnessed their plight. ‘The Jews could only shop between 4 and 5 p.m. They all wore the Yellow Star, and all their ration cards had Jew Jew Jew printed over them. They only got half of the rations the others got. And we always asked ourselves, how can these people live on these rations? Because it was already so little food. Once a week we made sausages. The sausage was cooked in a huge pot, and the result was some nice sausage stock, and all the customers came to get it because there were a few fatty bits in it and it was free. And my mother always felt very sorry for the Jews. We always made potato salad for which you didn’t need any ration cards, and we sold it in little paper bags, and the Jews would buy a lot of this salad.’
The deportation of Jews from the Reich to the East was decided in September 1941, the same day that Hitler had agreed to introduce the Yellow Star. Goebbels recorded ecstatically in his diary for 20 August 1941: ‘Furthermore the Führer has given the green light that I can deport Jews from Berlin to the new territories in the East as soon as the eastern campaign is over. Berlin will have to become a city clean of Jews. It is a scandal that there are still 78,000 Jews in the capital of the German people, parasites. They not only destroy the picturesque street life but they also create a bad mood. You can only stop it altogether by doing away with them. We have to sort out the Jewish problem without any sentimentality..’
In October, several thousand were sent from Berlin, Krefeld and other cities to Lodz, the preliminary to their eventual deportation to the death camps in Poland. From then on, the Jewish population lived in fear of ‘evacuation’. The full enormity of their fate was barely comprehended. They were told they were being evacuated to “settlements” in the East. A propaganda film showed Jewish ‘settlers’ in the new ‘Jewish city’ and ‘cultural centre’ of Theresienstadt, which boasted library facilities, concerts and theatre performances, pleasant airy streets and regular food, though the sleeping accommodation looked suspiciously like a crowded barracks. It was to be a staging post on the way to extermination.
In January 1942, Nazi leaders agreed on the “Final Solution”. The comprehensive programme for the systematic killing of European Jewry was put into action.
It was accompanied by a renewed blast of violent anti-Semitic propaganda. The killing began immediately in Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor. In his diary for 27 March 1942, Goebbels reported that Hitler remained ‘pitiless’ regarding the ‘Jewish Question’:
‘The Jews are now being deported to the East. A fairly barbaric procedure, not to be described in any greater detail, is being used here, and not much more remains of the Jews themselves. In general it can probably be established that 60 per cent of them must be liquidated, while only 40 per cent can be put to work… No sentimentality can be allowed to prevail in these things. If we didn’t fend them off, the Jews would annihilate us. It’s a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime could produce the strength to solve this question generally. Here, too. the Führer is the unswerving champion and spokesman of a radical solution.’
Transports began in July to the newly completed and largest camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The operation was top-secret, but the deportations were not. Gertrud Draber was among many who witnessed the forced removal of Jews. She worked at the Siemens factory in Berlin, which still employed Jewish women. One morning she arrived at work: ‘It was early in the morning before eight o’clock, before we started our shifts. People were flooding by, on their way to their offices. And I saw not one, at least two lorries had turned up and they were open, with no covers. Many women were there being herded towards the open trucks and pushed up – hauled – on to them. These women were wearing the Jewish Star. They were yelling, and crying. And I heard all the women screaming for their children. “I have to get back to my children!” “I have to fetch my children!” “I have to go home to my children!” They were herded liked sardines on to these lorries, and they were crying and yelling and fighting it and they were in such pain and sorrow. But nobody in charge took any notice of them. For me, for all of us, it was horrific. We were so sad and disbelieving, you couldn’t believe it could happen, that it was real. Then we were ordered, “Keep walking!” “Don’t stand here!” That’s how it was. And we had to walk on. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t forget something like that. It burned itself into my mind.’
Many others noted the disappearance of Jewish families from their neighbourhoods, but few asked where they had gone, beyond supposing they had emigrated, or gone to settle in the ‘East’.. This was the official version put out by the Propaganda department – even as it churned out the unceasing tide of hysterical vitriol against the Jews. Jewish professor Victor Klemperer noted in his diary the increase in transports, and gathered information from within the Jewish community and outside. On 28 November 1941, he received news of large-scale deportations from major cities: ‘One knows nothing precisely, not who is to go [on them], not when and not where [they are going].’ By March 1942, he had heard of Auschwitz – a camp with a reputation ‘as the most dreadful concentration camp… Death after a few days’. By February 1943, Klemperer believed that ‘from now on it is no longer to be expected that any Jews will return alive from Poland… After all, it has long been reported that many evacuees do not even arrive in Poland alive. They are gassed in cattle trucks during the trip.’ Rumours circulated. Among the non-Jewish population, many chose not to ask any further questions.